A Directory Of Indexing Programs

The software here may do more, but the reason it’s listed is because it can index your hard drive and let you find stuff really quickly. Oh, and they work on Windows. Here they are in no particular order (some more to come on this: see my earlier posting.)

diskMETAThe blurb: The question Where is that document? does not exist any longer. Ask diskMETA-computer document search this question and you will get an answer in a fraction of a second. The price: free to $100

Archivarius 3000The blurb: a full-featured application to search documents and e-mail on computer, local network and removable drives (CD, DVD). Documents can be searched by keyword or using query language, the same as in Internet search engines. The price: $20 and $45

X1The blurb: X1 is PC software that uses an advanced indexing process that lets you find any word in any email message or file on your computer with breathtaking speed. Download your free trial version now! The price: $78 (a free version of this is available as Yahoo! Desktop Search beta edition)

Scopeware VisionThe blurb: It’s awfully hard to retrace your steps to locate every file and email you’ve ever created, but there’s no need to. Scopeware Vision is the ultimate finder. It searches your PC or network and shows you the results as a stream of docs, emails, PDFs, web pages, photos, songs, or whatever you seek. The price: $30 up

SearchWithin (thanks Blog.org) The blurb: SearchWithin is a free full text index search engine that allows you to quickly search inside the files on your drive or network. It looks beyond the titles and inside PDF, HTML, Text, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Word Perfect and Microsoft PowerPoint documents. SearchWithin works just like major search engines, using advanced querying and full-text search technologies to help you find the information you need fast. Results are automatically displayed in your browser. The price: free

80-20 RetrieverThe blurb: Retriever Enterprise is a robust search tool that executes fast, accurate searching of all email folders and local/network file systems, to give users one access point to information stored on their personal systems. The award winning software acts as an all-encompassing “retriever” of information on individual workstations, providing users with a quick, comprehensive view of buried material. The price: $300 (thanks to David Brake of Blog.org)

TukarooThe blurb:Tukaroo desktop software provides the fastest search of desktop and LAN, categorizes and displays search results [and] correlates desktop searches with Internet content. The price: free (not yet past beta; recently bought out by Ask Jeeves. I noticed that by early January the Tukaroo website is down.)

HotBot DesktopThe blurb: The HotBot Desktop allows you to easily search the web while not losing the context of where you are in the results. Quickly visit all 10 results with half the clicks! Easily adjust the language, number of results as well as other preferences through web settings. The price: free

Grokker(thanks to David Brake of Blog.org who points out that Grokker includes a plug-in that uses Microsoft’s built in indexer) The blurb: The “My Files” plug-in lets you access the contents of your hard drive in two different ways. Using the keyword search, you can locate any file that contains a specific word in its name or content. Also, Grokker lets you graphically map and explore your hard drive, or any shared drive, over a local network. The price: $50

WilburThe blurb: Once Wilbur has indexed your files, he can display all of the files containing a specific word or set of words almost instantly. It is able to do this while keeping its index file much smaller than that the alternatives we have looked at. Wilbur can optionally track information on all files on your disk, not just the ones whose content is indexed. The price: free (thanks, Henry Finn)

blinkxThe blurb: blinkx changes the way you find and access all kinds of information, from anywhere in the world, without having to search endlessly. blinkx rapidly links you with the information you need from the web, from online news sources and files on your own PC. The price: free

Google Desktop SearchThe blurb: Google Desktop Search is how our brains would work if we had photographic memories. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, chats, and the web pages you’ve viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop Search puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails, and bookmarks. Price: free

MSN Toolbar SuiteThe blurb: Warning! Your browser does not meet the minimum system requirements. You are recommended to use the MSN Toolbar Suite with Internet Explorer 5.01 or later. (no really) Price: free

I loved the Copernic Desktop search – unfortunately my Pentium 4 with 3 mhz speed was too slow!!! With a large number of document files – 14,000 it slowed my computer to a halt, so I had to uninstall – When they get it right – I’d be happy to pay for it. Any suggestions?

I used both and had our company adopt Archivarius over Copernic. In plain sense, Copernic is useless for information research. Why? Because it lacks ability to sort data by relevance.

Eg: We have over 500GB of text docs and searching for “best time to sleep” in Copernic yields thousands of files. And who is gonna spend almost 10 hours looking through thousands of files to find a relevant documents.